Business, Financial & Legal Posts - Page 10

Investors fled from Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint, dumping their stocks on the market, as financial analysts showed concern about the current wireless price wars. It's a great time for consumers to switch wireless carriers and get a killer deal for consumers, but investors are deeply worried about long-term profitability.

Since mid-November, the four major US wireless carriers lost $45 billion in total market value, according to the Wall Street Journal. The sudden volatility in the stock market stems from Verizon and AT&T feeling pressure from T-Mobile and Sprint, with a fierce war underway. Other reports revealed Sprint dropped a whopping 16 percent, T-Mobile slid 10 percent, AT&T lost five percent and Verizon dropped six percent last week.

To end the current stock volatility, at least one carrier will need to shift focus back on profits instead of cutting prices - or if regulators begin to warm up to the idea of industry mergers.

Volvo is shaking up its sales and marketing strategies in 2015, and will turn attention away from glitzy auto shows, so will begin selling vehicles online. The company hopes increased spending on digital advertising will help it increase Web sales of its vehicles. Volvo is undergoing a "massive" effort to revamp its social media offering and main website to begin boosting Web sales.

"We have been doing what is expected in the car industry so far, and we're going to do things that are unexpected," said Alain Visser, Volvo marketing and sales head, in a statement to Bloomberg. The company wants to "stand out and challenge things," in its effort to promote new vehicles.

Volvo will attend one auto show in North America, one in Europe and one in Asia, instead of trying to spread itself thin by attending dozens - if not hundreds - of shows.

Smartphones serve a wide ranging number of functions, and companies hope to see consumers embrace mobile payments. As the number of mobile payment services continues to increase, there is great fragmentation among which services retailers accept, while consumers appear to be waiting to see what happens.

Apple Pay and the Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX) look to have the largest amount of support - and as they battle one another - other rivals will continue to show their wares. However, it's going to be difficult for smartphone owners to find one service, test it, and fall in love with it while there are so many questions that still need to be answered.

Mobile spending in 2019, including online, in-person and person-to-person, will account for just 1 percent of the $16 trillion consumer spending in the United States, according to Forrester Research estimates.

There was a very brief error on Amazon UK's site that saw thousands of sales of third-party goods that were sold for just $0.01, with the glitch originating from Amazon Marketplace's Repricer Express between 7-8PM GMT on December 12.

Amazon issued a statement about the problem to Sky News shortly after the error took place, saying "we are aware that a number of Marketplace sellers listed incorrect prices for a short period of time as a result of the third party software they use to price their items on Amazon.co.uk". The retail giant has announced that most of the orders that were placed, have since been cancelled.

The piece of software in question is a subscription service that monitors Amazon pricing continuously for the lowest price, and then sets sale prices on items that a user sets as something they're after. Up to 60,000 item prices can be changed per hour, with the constant re-pricing there to maintain the lowest prices to give a seller the best change of being in Amazon's prized "More Buying Choices" box.

The CIA misled the White House, Justice Department, Congress and the US people in its effort to conduct intelligence gathering operations by using torture, according to the Senate intelligence committee. Wolfgang Kaleck, Edward Snowden's attorney and director of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), wants Europe to target the "architects" of organized torture operations spearheaded by the CIA.

"We're preparing reams of dossiers, and demanding of prosecutors that they do the same for those who are named in the report and those known as the higher-ups who directed and conducted this system," Kaleck recently told The Guardian. "If these people enter European territory, they need to know that they'll run into severe trouble."

Kaleck also defended a German national, Khaled El Masri, who was wrongly seized by the CIA in 2004 - and wants the German government to begin requesting extradition requests to the United States, which will clearly be denied. El Masri was taken in Macedonia, shipped to Afghanistan, and tortured for five months. After the CIA figured out they seized the wrong person, they flew him to Albania and just left him on the side of the road.

It looks like Facebook has been spending big on its most exciting acquisition, Oculus VR, to acquire two companies that would better position Oculus VR as the absolute champion of VR technology... when the Rift launches that is.

Oculus VR has acquired two companies this week, the first being Nimble VR while the second one being 13th Lab. Nimble VR is a two-year old company that took to Kickstarter a while ago, developing skeletal hand tracking and software, as well as a depth-sensing camera dubbed Nimble Sense that would see the hands of Oculus Rift users in the VR world, all with gesture recognition. 13th Lab is the other company Oculus VR acquired, which makes accurate, maker-less augmented reality tracking and real-time 3D construction framework technology.

Oculus VR talked about its acquisition of 13th Lab in a blog post saying: "The ability to acquire accurate 3D models of the real-world can enable all sorts of new applications and experiences, like visiting a one-to-one 3D model of the pyramids in Egypt or the Roman Colosseum in VR". Oculus isn't finished just yet, as it also announced it has hired motion capture expert Chris Breglar, who is a professor of Computer Science at New York University and contributor to motion tracking special effects in big Hollywood films like Star Trek Into Darkness and The Lone Ranger. Bregler will lead a vision research team at Oculus VR.

The email exchange was leaked after the Guardians of Peace breached SPE, stealing emails, employee personal information, movies, and terabytes of other data.

Not surprisingly, Rudin issued a statement quickly: "To anybody I've offended, I'm profoundly and deeply sorry, and I regret and apologize for any injury they might have caused. I made a series of remarks that were meant only to be funny, but in the cold light of day, they are in fact thoughtless and insensitive - and not funny at all."

Sweden may have finally dropped The Pirate Bay off the map earlier this week, but Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) wondered why the Obama Administration wasn't able to remove the "illegal enterprise operating out of Sweden" even sooner.

Sen. Whitehouse Googled "pirate movies" and quickly found a link to The Pirate Bay via Google, apparently leaving him frustrated.

"There are ways in which these companies could go to court and try to knock this stuff down," Sen. Whitehouse recently said. "There are ways in which prosecutors can have discussions with companies about aiding and abetting offenses, and being accessories to offense. There's a lot that can be done in this area, it seems to me."

Qualcomm is reportedly letting go of a decent chunk of its worldwide staff, with 158 jobs in San Diego being cut, and up to 100 elsewhere around California. On top of that, we have around 600 jobs in total being let go from Qualcomm's global workforce.

Then, a nice source pointed us in the direction of a thread on Reddit by "lgotlaidoff" who said "Just got fired today. Upto 1500 people to be fired in coming weeks. The "600" number that they are talking in media is pure BS".

A spokesperson from Qualcomm said in a statement: "We regularly evaluate our businesses to determine where efficiencies can be obtained and priorities addressed. On occasion, that requires we adjust the size or skill mix of our work teams in order to shrink or eliminate some projects and start and grow new projects". The layoffs will begin on February 11, 2015 according to a filing by the company with the California Employment Development Department.

If this does turn out to be true, Qualcomm would be playing the numbers down for various reasons. We should find out soon enough, as 900 jobs are something you can't hide for too long.

Google doesn't want its popular YouTube talent to leave its video sharing website, so it is reportedly offering these stars big bonuses for staying with the company.

Big YouTube stars and video producers are reportedly being offered bigger payments, as well as additional funding in exchange for signing a multi-year exclusivity deal. This would have the YouTube star signed to the service, where their content must be used on YouTube exclusively, for a very long time, before it can be pushed onto other services.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that YouTube's Global Head of Business has been pushing the company through a "fire drill" in order to keep their most valued talent. YouTube doesn't want its competitors such as Facebook, or others to capture them, as these competitors are apparently offering "incredibly attractive" offers.